


You and I, Mercs in Love

by ActiveAgression



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Fake AH Crew, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 21:41:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5349572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ActiveAgression/pseuds/ActiveAgression
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray only feels alive when he's killing people and it's becoming a problem for the crew so Ryan shows him a new way to feel alive... It's totally sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You and I, Mercs in Love

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic is inspired by me mishearing lyrics. Every time i listen to 'Sedated' by Hozier, i hear 'you and i, mercs in love' rather then what it's meant to be so... yeah. That caused this... and a couple of other fics.

Ray watches Ryan sink a dagger up through a man, curling under ribs and ripping him open. Ray watches the blade get whipped out and he watches thick bright blood drip and puddle. Ray watches Ryan kill a man and he feels nothing, he’s numb to it. He doesn’t care about the man’s life, the family waiting for him to come home. He watches a person die and he doesn’t care.

“Is that fucked up?” he asks Jack one day and Jack sighs; like this is something he’s gone over and over before now, rolling the thought around in his head like it matters, like when Ray was younger and stared at the gun in his hands for hours, wondering if life was really worth living anyway.

“Yeah,” Jack finally replies, “it’s fucked up.”

Ultimately, none of them really care about people dying. They’re criminals after all, it comes with the job but Ray finds himself staring more and more at the crazed joy in Ryan’s eyes when he’s killing someone and wonders if he enjoys it too. Does he enjoy taking someone’s life away in a moment, like a vengeful god with a pink sniper rifle? He tells himself he doesn’t, that it’s just a job but it’s a lie, he realises.

He shoots someone the next day. He gets them in the face. “Headshot!” he booms over the comms and he hears Michael laugh vaguely, like it’s buried behind the ringing in his ears. He feels high, like he’s floating and he can feel his blood rushing through his veins. He feels alive, not numb like when he’d watched Ryan kill. He feels powerful.

It’s a rush he’s never really noticed before, too focused on the job. Now though, it's obvious and he couldn't possibly ignore it even if he tried. He lifts his gun again, he fires again and again and again and he laughs. Fuck, it feels good. It feels great. He finds himself happily sniping people; any people, people he isn’t meant to be killing. He watches their lives end and his heart soars and some part of him feels like it’s wrong, this is wrong, but he grins through that; embraces it.  
It is wrong and he doesn’t care, let it be wrong. He’ll still do it.

 

Back at the apartment, Geoff lectures him that collateral damage is fine but twelve civilians being sniped is not collateral and not his job.

“It’s straight up murder,” Geoff tells him softly, like he’s talking to a child. Ray nods, agrees and leaves but doesn’t really care. He’s never really cared after all. Ryan watches him go, face hidden behind his skull mask as usual. He leans back against the wall and waits.

Two days later and Ray is back on the couch, being lectured once more but this time it’s not just Geoff yelling and Ryan creeping from the corner. Michael’s sitting on the couch across from him, face pinched with worry and Gavin is fluttering about, fiddling with things and chewing on his lip as Geoff hisses, “You killed eight people who weren’t even in the building. Hell, they weren’t even on that side of the town.”

Ray nods and thinks he should look apologetic but he isn’t so he doesn’t. He just sits there blankly as Jack leans in the doorway quietly and Ryan watches them calculatingly from the shadows.

“Why are you doing it Ray?” Michael asks pleadingly and Ray shrugs, saying nothing.

“Just don’t do it again,” Geoff snarls. His fists bash into the table. It creaks and trembles. Ray knows it would have broken if it'd been Michael who'd smashed it. He glances to the side, at Ryan. Maybe it would've broken under Ryan's fists. Maybe it would have given up it's entire existence in fear at Ryan's very presence. Ray waits for that same fear as the dark sockets gaze at him. It doesn't come. He's so numb.

Geoff's walking out, muttering. Jack follows after him, almost puppy like. When Ray looks back at the wall, Ryan's gone and then Michael's face is in the way. 

"Ray," he snaps, angrily because everything Michael does is angry. 

"Michael," Gavin whines, possibly at the anger or possibly just as a warning to leave it. Either way, Michael's face blanks and he leaves too. Gavin trails along behind like a dilapidated puppet. 

Ray retreats to his room, wondering if he’d always felt so numb.

He enters his room to find Ryan already there, standing casually on the thick carpet. Ray ignores him, pulling his favourite hoodie out and shucking off the shirt he’s been wearing all day. It’s covered in rubble and dust and sweat.

“Why not?” Ryan asks oddly and Ray looks up from where he’s just thrown his shirt.

“What?” he questions and the skull mask betrays nothing of Ryan’s expression.

“When you kill those people. You look at them through the gun and you know you can kill them. You know no one can stop you and you think, “why not?” Ryan states and Ray nods up at him slowly. “And,” Ryan continues, “every time you kill someone, you get this little rush of power. You disconnect from the job and your mind derails because all you want is more of that feeling.”

“You feel it too?” Ray asks, slumping down on the edge of his bed. Ryan nods.

“I have,” he says and Ray feels something a little less numb jump in his chest because Ryan understands. Ryan gets it.

“You need to stop,” Ryan tells him, voice grave and blue eyes serious in the dark sockets of the mask.

“What?” Ray asks, voice cracking down the middle a little because he thought Ryan understood.

“I get that what you feel when you kill someone is overwhelming. Like nothing else can measure up. You feel numb,” Ryan says and Ray nods because that is it exactly and if Ryan understands then why would he ask him to stop?  
“You need to stop because you aren’t focused on the job.”

Ray opens his mouth to object, to argue but he knows Ryan’s right. He’d been so set on killing people that the only reason he’d killed the targets specifically was because they’d been the ones he’d shot first.  
“I don’t think I can,” he admits quietly, staring down at his hands because if he couldn’t focus on the job, he couldn’t be a sniper for them and suddenly, without Geoff, consequences would be very real for him.

A quiet snick comes from Ryan’s direction and Ray looks up into a terrifying mess of red and black and white. He jolts back, away, horrified at the state of Ryan’s face before it clicks that it’s just face paint and then he realises he’s staring at Ryan’s actual face; a face no one gets to see.

His heart hammers into his chest and Ray can’t be numb if he tries because he’s just seen Ryan’s – The Mad King’s – face and rumour is that no one who sees that face ever lives to see another day. He backs up his bed, reaching for his gun and bringing it up to point at Ryan’s painted face.

“Don’t move,” he orders and Ryan just scoffs at him before disappearing into the door behind him, the bathroom.  
Water rushes from inside the bathroom and Ray places a hand over his racing heart, calming himself.

When Ryan emerges from the bathroom, his face is clean of paint and surprisingly handsome, with a strong jaw and blonde stubble.  
“Put down the gun,” he tells Ray but Ray’s composed himself and keeps his gun trained on Ryan, numb once more.  
“Put down the gun,” Ryan says again and walks forward like he’s not being threatened, like there isn’t a lethal weapon aimed at him.

“Why?” Ray wavers and Ryan grabs the gun from him easily, empties it and drops it to the floor beside the bed.

“You need to feel something,” Ryan tells him distractedly as he climbs between Ray’s legs and pins him against the headboard, “or else killing will consume you.”

“It makes me feel,” Ray murmurs and Ryan chuckles, tilting his head back to look at him, “I know.”

With that, Ryan wraps a firm hand around his neck and kisses him, prying his lips open and touching tongue to teeth. It’s unlike any kiss Ray has had before; the hesitant first ones, the sloppy lip-gloss coated one’s he’d stolen in clubs. This one is warm and wet and he can feel Ryan’s stubble against his jaw, scratching at his skin. It’s passionate and claiming and Ray knows no kiss will ever match up to this.  
Ryan pulls back slightly and Ray lets out his breaths in wet pants against Ryan’s lips.

“Let me make you feel again,” Ryan whispers to him, kissing him softly in between words, “can I make you feel again?”  
Ray fists his hands in Ryan’s shirt and nods, gasping as fingers smooth up his bare hipbones, his waist and his ribs to brush over his nipples. He arches into it, mind going a million miles an hour because Ryan hasn’t even done anything yet and already he feels alive, feels the same rush he does when he takes a life but this is better, so much better. It’s the rush of a kill multiplied by a hundred, maybe a million.

Ryan’s just brushing his fingers over Ray’s shoulders lightly, lips pressing pleasantly against his own and already he’s too far gone with it, lost in lust and fear and… affection for the man before him.

This time it’s him that leans up to connect their lips and Ryan groans against his mouth, settling between his legs, hips pressed to hips.

They part briefly, long enough for Ray to ask, “does this mean I’ll be addicted to you?” and Ryan chooses to answer with a kiss, which about gives Ray his answer: ‘yes’.  
Ray finds he doesn’t mind.

They start their next mission and Ray’s noticeably different, joking and playing with the other lads. He seems happier, more alive. He’s also more focused, checking in with Geoff and doing only what he’s been told to do.  
Towards the end however, he gets quieter and then abruptly his voice comes out loud and clear over the intercom:  
“Well…” Ray starts and Geoff groans.

“How many people did you kill this time?”

“None,” Ray answers cheerfully, if not a little disjointed, “all I’m saying is this guy’s never gonna be an adventurer again.”  
Everyone laughs except for Ryan who had finished his part half an hour ago and hasn’t spoken over the intercom since.

Geoff notices and huffs, “Ryan, check in” he commands and gets no response.

“Ryan!” He yells and instead of Ryan’s voice husking through the earpiece, Ray answers sounding nervous and breathy, “He’s fine. He’s with me.”

“And he can’t tell me that himself because?” Geoff growls, irritated and hopelessly attempting to get Gavin to stop trying to teabag people.

“Uh…” Ray hesitates before deciding ‘yolo’ and says, “his mouths kind of full of dick right now. He’ll check in later.”

“Motherfucking children,” Geoff curses and hurls a grenade sourly in Gavin’s direction, chuckling at the accented, “What the fuck Geoff!” before Gavin rushes past him in a whirl of gold hair and clumsy limbs.

Ray watches idly from his position at the top of his sniping tower, laughing at Gavin’s antics as they chatter through to him over the comm.  
He knows Ryan’s about to talk before it happens, feels the wet warmth of Ryan’s mouth disappear and then he’s being scowled at. Ryan glares at him, blonde and pouting a little, mouth red and spit slick.

“Are you laughing at me?” he questions, sounding very offended and very like he’d have no problem shooting Ray up here and leaving him for dead.

“You know I’m not,” Ray huffs, twitching his hips up at Ryan in a silent command. Ryan doesn’t seem to care about his commands though, resting his elbow on Ray’s thigh and making a show of ignoring the obvious erection almost touching his face.  
Ray glares at him, letting his displeasure be known and grabs his sniper rifle from its case, “fine, stop. See if I care. I’ll just pick off some people instead,” he threatens and Ryan laughs.

“Okay,” he says and Ray stares down at him incredulously because wasn’t the whole point of this to stop him killing people?  
Ryan smirks up at him. “Tell me how your aim is,” he murmurs as he sinks back down on Ray’s dick, tongue pressing in great and fantastic ways.

Ray takes the challenge anyway, shakily sniping at someone and missing by metres.  
Ryan hums questioningly and Ray glowers down at him, “It’s shit. My aim is shit.”


End file.
